


to find peace

by elliptical



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Movie 1: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Spoilers, Past Abuse, Post-Movie 1: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Spoilers, Trauma, the patronus is a metaphor for emotional support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 20:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8815492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: Credence searches for warmth.





	

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings for pretty much everything seen in the movie. trauma, past abuse, mental health issues, depression, etcetc
> 
> i literally got home from seeing the movie and booted up my laptop and wrote this, therefore the likelihood of errors both grammatical and canon adherent is high. everyone's at the apartment instead of scattered over the world for some reason. i just want credence to be loved

Credence isn’t aware enough to realize where he’s going, at first. To say he’s little more than a thought would be inaccurate - he’s not _thought_ so much as _impulse_ , a wisp of energy drifting on the wind. He knows the feeling of being something much bigger, something yawning and frightening and powerful, something as far out of his own control as the turn of the tides and as close to himself as the beat of his heart. He knows the feeling of pain, and fear, and shame. He knows the feeling of collapse, of withering, of Unbecoming. He knows he used to be something bigger, and he knows that now he’s something much smaller.

Somehow that’s more frightening than the uncontrolled power of before. Being small means not being able to fight back. At least when the frothing ocean was at his command, no one could hurt him but himself, but he could hurt

-he could hurt-

-he hurt-

-he was bad. There’s not enough thought to remember names, faces, memories. Bad things happened because of him. He _is_ bad, this little wisp of himself that still clings to consciousness, and he’s frightened, and he wants so much to not be bad or frightened. Untethered by the impulses that may have held him when he still had a body, he drifts, impulse and shadow and the want for _warm, warm, warm._

Warm’s definition is a little wooden corner that tastes of magic, just shadowed enough to hide but catching the flickering evening candlelight. Credence isn’t sure what makes this corner so much warmer than any other corner, but he is certain no one can hurt him here, so here he stays. It’s hard to gauge the passing of time, but he’s not concerned about time so much anymore. No thought, no memories, no fear. Just the warm and himself tucked where no one can find him, no one can hurt him, he can’t hurt anyone else.

The warm is in the magic. He doesn’t realize he’s soaking it up, growing stronger, until several things happen at once: 

His awareness expands enough to realize that he’s in the small kitchen of an apartment building, and there are three other people in the room. He recognizes two of them, which means the memories are coming back, but they’re just flashes.

_we’ll protect you_

_we’re going to protect you_

_-howling, screaming, nonono don’t touch me don’t come near me don’t touch me run hide don’t touch me don’t hurt me don’t hurt her don’t hurt me DON’T HURT ME I DIDN’T MEAN TO GET AWAY GET BACK I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG-_

The lights in the kitchen flicker. He rolls, a shadow like any other, panic clawing up a throat and tearing at nonexistent vocal cords, and he has to get out run hide stay shelter fight help help help help help, and he tries to lash out, but his power is a tiny wisp and it won’t do more than interrupt the lights. He cries anyway, silent, screaming, _help help help help help_ -

All three people are looking at him, which just makes everything worse, because he’s supposed to be protected in this little space and he tries to shrink himself down smaller and they’re not coming closer but he tries to lash out again anyway, phantom strain in a heart he no longer has and wheezing breaths through lungs that don’t exist. One lightbulb flickers out, and then he’s so tired he can’t manage more, and he sinks down and pretends that if he hides for long enough pain won’t befall him.

The lady he doesn’t recognize has very yellow hair, and she looks confused. And sad. Not angry and not scared, Credence would be able to pick those out too, but she’s definitely sad. She drops to one knee, but she doesn’t try to close the space between them, doesn’t reach for him.

“Credence,” she says.

His name is jarring. He’d forgotten it, maybe, or just didn’t want it, cast it aside, keep it with the unimportant things, _credence means belief and maybe if i believed harder i could have fixed it all i didn’t mean to i wanted to i wanted to hurt them all i didn’t want to i wanted-_

He lashes out again, like he’s struggling with the walls of a cell, but he’s lethargic from the energy spent. He shifts upward instead, slips between the decaying strands of a cobweb that’s been on the ceiling for who knows how long, but all three pairs of eyes follow his progress. He could flit out of the apartment, out of this moment, he knows how, but that means leaving the _warm_ and the despair chokes him because he doesn’t know what he did wrong this time but it’s going to be taken from him it’s always taken from him and he just wanted the warm -

He sinks back onto the floor, a flickering shadow, and it must look like acquiescence but it feels like defeat. Like the exhausted acceptance of sinking down against a locked closet door after scratching fingernails apart, dried tear tracks over cheeks, dull hollow emptiness to replace the knife edge of desperation.

The yellow haired lady is talking again, but she’s taken her eyes off him, addressing the other people instead. Her voice is very soft.

“...no, I can _hear_ him, that’s not just a scrap of Obscurus, he’s still in there - Credence, honey, we aren’t gonna hurt you, no - what do we _do?_ ”

The man he recognizes kneels down as well, outstretches a hand, his palm up. He’s too far away to actually touch, which keeps Credence from cringing. He looks just as confused as the yellow haired lady, but a little less sad, a little more earnest.

“Credence,” he says, and Credence recognizes the softness of his voice, remembers it as warmth in the train station. The voice is good, a better focus than the energy and hopelessness he’s made of, so he listens to it.

The man keeps talking without waiting for a response. Credence gets the sense that he knows his voice is important even if the words might not be, warm, warm, warm

“We met in the train station, I’m not sure if you remember - those might not be wonderful memories to recall right now, anyway - how on earth did you find your way here, I never…” He pauses, his arm still outstretched, his eyes bright. “Tina mentioned the shadows have been playing strangely in this corner of the room. I’d formulated a few theories - she’s a practical sort of lady, Tina, she doesn’t tend to make a fuss about shadows where there’s no real darkness - but I never imagined it was _this_. It’s actually - a bit of a relief, do you know? No, Queenie, don’t cry, we should keep things stable - wait, am I upsetting him, I’m not trying to - I won’t hurt you, Credence, I promise. I might have gotten overexcited, but none of us are going to hurt you.”

“You’re not upsetting him,” says the yellow haired lady - Queenie? - swiping at her eyes like she’s furious with herself for tearing up in the first place. “It’s just… a lot.”

“Right, all right, well - I must confess to you, Credence, this is a matter in which I have very little idea what I’m doing, so I may not be doing any of the right things at all, but I think it’s important you know you’re safe here. Of course you’re safe here.” The man shifts his weight, settling back, less like he’s seeking an answer and more like he’s tucking in to read a good book. Some solitary, long activity, like he’s not squatting on a dirty kitchen floor talking to shadows.

Credence’s attention drifts to the last member of the trio. He recognizes her not by the face but by the warmth, because she’s the magic he’s been hiding in. He remembers her by feel rather than name - _nice to me, she was nice to me, she helped me_ \- and something inside him both familiar and alien flares a new impulse. He doesn’t want to hurt her, doesn’t want to destroy, doesn’t want to maim the same frantic way he did others, but he wants her energy so badly.

It’s the fear on her face that keeps him from acting. She’s sad, mostly, and a part of her seems coldly analytical, watching the situation unfold. But there’s fear too. She’s scared of him, and what he might do, and what he has done, and what he is, and the shame and guilt and fear snarl him into knots. _i didn’t mean to i did mean to i wanted them hurt i wanted protection i wanted to protect i wanted to hurt i didn’t mean to i didn’t want to hurt anyone i did i did i did_

“Careful, Newt,” she says, putting her hand on the man’s shoulder. But then she looks at Credence and adds, “It’s all right. He’s telling the truth. I know how much pain you’re in, I know what happened to you wasn’t fair.”

Wasn’t it? Credence can’t remember. It’s all a tangled jumble, and it all hurts, and he doesn’t like this piece of himself with thoughts and identity and memory. He wants to go back to being a wisp.

“It’s remarkable, really,” the man says, speaking faster now. “I mean, I never thought, not with how many wizards - but I suppose everything about you is unprecedented, it would make sense that you could survive, I wonder if you can still summon a corporeal form? _Remarkable,_ to live as long as you did and still be conscious now, I…”

Credence remembers someone else talking about him this way. It wasn’t this man, but the warmth was the same, and he remembers trusting and hoping and loving and aching, and the splitting pain of the betrayal when it turned out he was wrong, _stupid stupid stupid and maybe if i was worth loving it would have been different what did i do wrong i didn’t mean to_

“Newt,” Queenie says, putting her hand on his other shoulder, “ease up a little. You’re scaring him.”

“I’m sorry,” the man - Newt - says immediately, the fervor dying from his voice. “I get carried away, sometimes. It’s not important how you came to be here. What is important is that you are here, so we can help you. We just need to figure out how. We’ll devise a plan. Some kind of grand scheme. You see, when there’s no precedent for something, a little creativity is necessary.”

“Right,” says the woman Credence recognizes, and he doesn’t remember her name, and for some reason this makes him feel worse.

“Tina,” Queenie says. “Her name is Tina. Tina Goldstein. She and I are sisters.”

Newt flicks his gaze between Credence’s corner and Queenie’s face. “Is he talking to you?”

“Not… quite. Mostly still just feelings. Settling down a little, though.” Her mouth pinches. “He’s in so much pain.”

Newt shifts again, sitting crosslegged. “You can come out if you’d like, Credence. We know you aren’t going to hurt anyone.”

It might be better to stay in the corner. He’s been hurt so many times before, stumbling, idiot mistakes, reaching for the wrong people. But he’s not sure how long the corner can last, and the energy here doesn’t seem sustainable, not now that he remembers more. And Newt and Tina and Queenie are all warm people, even if they are sad or scared, and he can’t see anger in any of them, and he thinks - hopes - that maybe like this he’s better at knowing people than when he had a body.

He wants to go to Tina, because he remembers her best, remembers her warmest, remembers her showing kindness with no ulterior motive. But she gasps a little when he slides out from the corner, curling across the floorboards. She doesn’t want to be scared, but she knows what he is, and so she’s cautious. Queenie knows what he feels, so he shies from her, not wanting to see himself mirrored amplified anchored a hundredfold. Newt is the most likely to betray of all three of them, but he’s also the most open, and Credence really doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. So he touches Newt’s outstretched hand.

Things happen fast, again, quick flashes. Warm energy rushes into him, soothing like a hot drink in the bitter cold of January. He yanks at it with a mindless fervor he hasn’t possessed in a long time, animal instinct, parasite. He wants the energy. It’s not the frothing ocean of magic that used to be welled within him, or the screaming pain of tearing apart. If his own self is a stormy ocean, Newt is a sunlit glassy lake, and he wants -

Something slams into him in a way nothing does these days. The energy cuts off abruptly, sunlight vanishing, leaving nothing but Credence’s own cold. He tries to press toward Newt again only to find a wall between them, and when he searches for a way over or under or around it, he can’t. It doesn’t take him long to realize he’s trapped in some kind of bubble, and that’s when the terror takes over, the bladed edge licking his ragged edges like devouring flame. He screams, or tries to, and tries to retreat to his corner, but the way is blocked there too. All the heat gone, and now he’s stuck, and he shouldn’t have moved, shouldn’t have tried -

He curls on himself in the bottom of the bubble and cries like an exhausted child, too tired for a tantrum. The walls of his prison are clear, though the sound through them is muffled. He sees Newt leaning his head back against the table leg, pale and trembly and sweating, the way people get when they have the flu. He sees Tina patting his cheek and speaking to him in low, urgent tones; he sees Queenie with the back of her hand against Newt’s brow, but her gaze is locked on Credence.

He understands, as well as he can understand. He did something wrong. He made Newt sick, almost certainly would have killed him if he hadn’t been forced away. He’s bad. All that’s left is to drain anything good until it’s a withered husk of nothing, and he doesn’t want that. He wasn’t trying to hurt Newt, didn’t want to hurt Newt, didn't mean to...

_(i didn’t want to hurt anybody ever except when i did i wanted them to hurt but not how it happened it wasn’t me it was me it wasn’t me)_

He can’t have warm things. If he’d sought the core of Tina’s energy out, he would have killed her. If he stays in the apartment, he won’t be able to control himself. He thought he was safe from hurting people now that he’s so small, but all it takes is one misplaced impulse and everything comes crashing down. It’s… good, that he’s in here. He hurts, and he wants to stop hurting, but he’s never been allowed that, and at least if he stays here he can stop his own contagion from spreading.

What happens after that is almost peace, if peace and pain can coexist. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, and no one to fight, and no one to protect, so he lays at the bottom of the bubble and gives up. The futility is freeing. What he wants most is for the dull aching to go away, but the ache stings less than lashes, and he thinks maybe it’s the right punishment for everything he got wrong. Idiot boy, trusting the wrong people, trusting people at all, thinking he could be something, thinking he could be happy, thinking love mattered. Thinking himself worthy of love, what kind of rotten selfish arrogance, as if he ever earned -

The thoughts don’t hurt him like they used to. They just bleed into each other, simple facts of who he is, how he got here. He loses time again, because time doesn’t matter. Maybe if there’s such thing as mercy, God will let him unspool into nonexistence. Maybe God hasn’t because Credence is already in hell. Hell doesn’t burn the way he expected. Hell is just empty, and cold.

He has no idea how long it’s been when the walls of his prison melt away and he slips like an oil slick back onto the floor. He registers the same three wizards, but more than that he registers the pain of renewed warmth, and he’d cry if he had the energy. _don’t make me do this again i’m so tired just let me be still i don’t want to hurt anyone_

Queenie speaks first, her painful swallow audible in the silence of the room. “He wants you to put him back.”

“What?” Tina asks. “Why?”

“Feels guilty about… what happened last time. Doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” Queenie pauses. “Doesn’t want to hope for anything.”

“Can we make a deal, Credence?” That’s Newt, soft spoken and gentle as always. “Tina had an idea - she’s brilliant, you know, excellent problem solving skills, I’m a little offended I didn’t think of it myself - anyway, Tina had an idea about how we may be able to help you. I won’t let you hurt anyone. If it doesn’t work, I can put you back in the bubble until - until we have another idea.”

He stumbles a little over the end, and Credence knows what he’s not saying; he doesn’t expect to have another idea. That’s fine. He’s not sure how exactly they think they can help him, since he destroys everything he touches, but if it makes them feel better to try, they might as well.

“That sounds okay to him,” Queenie says.

“All right - all right, that’s good. Credence, I need to be completely honest with you. I’m not sure what effect this will have. It’s possible it will help you, but it’s also possible it will hurt you, and if we’ve miscalculated it might destroy you. Granted, most things have the potential to destroy you if you miscalculate them, but that’s not… the point. I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m not trying to hurt you, but as I mentioned before, there’s no real precedent for this.”

Credence shrugs, inasmuch as an incorporeal being can shrug. The thought of pain should mean more to him, should conjure up at least some pale imitation of fear, but he’s so tired.

Queenie’s mouth is pinched again, her eyes tight. “He… doesn’t care if it hurts him.”

“Right. All right, well.” Newt runs a hand through his hair. “All right. Um. You see, Obscuri are incredible magical beings. It’s the magic that causes the destruction, not the host. But it’s repressed fear and pain that feed the Obscurus. The more there is, and the more power there is, the stronger the Obscurus grows. In all the documented cases we have, they’ve consumed their host and died with them, except in the one case where I separated… The curious thing about you, Credence, is that you’re not entirely Obscurus. Your human consciousness survives. Really, the amount we could learn about… I’m getting turned around. The Obscurus has been feeding on your pain and growing for a long time, long enough to survive when it should have died. Your survival is a miracle, even if it doesn’t seem like one. And Tina was talking, and she mentioned how all that destruction is born of so much pain and so much repression, and how the best way to help would be to introduce hope again. Which seemed fair, but I couldn’t figure out how to get you what you need without a - a repeat of last time, and I was willing to try it again but Queenie and Tina weren’t too keen… anyway. Tina pointed out that there _is_ magic that might be able to heal an Obscurial, but I don’t think you’d be able to access it yourself, so I’ll try to use it instead.”

“Newt,” Tina says. “You’re nervous. You’re rambling.”

“Well, I’m trying not to be nervous,” he says. “It’ll either work or it won’t.”

“Then stop chattering and _do it._ ”

“Starting small,” he says, though he seems to be talking mostly to himself. “Just in case things go badly.”

Then he pulls out his wand and waves it. Whatever incantation is required for the spell, Credence doesn’t know. A little wisp of shimmery white spills from the tip, like a thread of pure moonlight. It dissipates before anything happens, and Queenie says, “Maybe start a little less small.”

Newt takes a few breaths and waves his wand again. What spills from the end shines just as brightly as before, but it’s stronger, knotted thread rather than fragile spiderweb silk. Credence watches and thinks that he should feel something, wonder or fear or confusion, but he can’t summon up the emotions to match, and then the silvery light settles over him.

He expects it to feel sticky, for some reason. He expects it to snare him like the web it resembles. He expects pain. He does not expect it to have the same soft, warm energy that Newt did when he touched him. He does not expect it to have weight, as though he’s being covered by something solid. He does not expect it to ease the dull aching inside him.

It’s not wild, uncontrolled emotion. It’s not paired with desperate, impulsive want. It’s an anchor. It’s sinking into a hot bath after walking through the snow, or curling up underneath a fireplace-warmed quilt. It’s the ease of muscle tension laying down after a long day, the promise of sleep to chase away troubles. It’s the quiet ache for a better life, the reward after a job well done.

Credence settles, really settles, for the first time he can remember. The warm light keeps pouring from Newt’s wand, pooling a blanket over him. Tendrils of worry and exhaustion fight to surface - _no no you shouldn’t i’m bad i don’t deserve this i shouldn’t feel good this is wrong this is wrong i have to hurt i’m bad_ \- but he can’t hold onto them. They slither out of his grasp the way kind thoughts usually do, and he finds himself fighting to get them back, and then that effort seems pointless, so he stops.

It’s like a balm over raised welts, leeching away the pain. It’s warmer than the corner. Warmer than Newt, warmer than Tina. Credence rests in the cocoon of light, blissed out on sheer relief. From far away, he hears Queenie say, “It’s working,” and then he registers two more spools of light working their way into the cocoon. Threading with it, strengthening it. Tina and Queenie are offering their own energy.

He can taste each of their individual energy, glimpse little touches of memory and imagination that spin through the light. The cocoon traps him, but it doesn’t feel like entrapment. It feels like healing. He wouldn’t want to move even if he could, and some pained part of him thinks, _this’ll end and i’ll be alone again_ , but even that thought is too hard to hold onto. He lays in the embrace of their love, trust, hope, and he lets go.

“It’s called a Patronus,” Newt murmurs, punctuating the silence with more soft chatter. “They’re not usually used for this exact purpose. Fully formed, they’re magical beings that can protect a wizard from despair - the functional opposite of an Obscurus, all things considered. They’re very difficult to produce, though, especially in times of distress, which is unfortunate considering those are when they tend to be needed most. Anyway. These aren’t fully formed Patronuses - mine tends to be rather large, you see, I think it might wreak havoc in the apartment - but the same magical principle applies.”

Credence curls up, closes his eyes.

Tina speaks, her own voice soft, matching Newt’s. “I know what’s been done to you, Credence. I know the pain that you’ve been in. You didn’t deserve any of it. You should have grown up with a family who loved you, with the ability to love your own magic. You should have been loved. Not hurt, not manipulated, not betrayed like you were. I know we can’t erase all of that. We can’t make the pain go away forever. But we can give you this, at least. We can love you.”

He doesn’t know how to ask the question pulsing through his mind, doesn’t have the right words, but Queenie forms them for him. “He wants to know why.”

“Why?”

“Why he matters to you.”

Tina pauses, considers her answer. “You shouldn’t have to earn love. Love given conditionally isn’t helpful at all. You deserve peace.”

The darkness struggles to raise its head. _i killed people i hurt people i scared my sister i didn’t mean to but i did i let go i didn't control it i didn't want to it’s my fault it’s my fault_

“It’s not your fault,” Newt says, and he’s still gentle, but there’s something fierce underneath the words. “It’s not your fault you were misunderstood by the world. It’s not your fault people hurt you because of what they don’t understand. It’s not your fault people saw you as something to take advantage of rather than someone miraculous. It’s _not your fault._ You aren’t bad, Credence. You have been hurt so many times you can’t untangle it all. You don’t need to untangle it all right now. You don’t even need to believe us. All you need to do is trust that we believe what we’re saying, and we’re going to care for you.”

The light threads through him, through the darkness that has become his body, and he thinks he’s going to break apart. He’s certain they’ve considered the possibility. Maybe there’s nothing left of him under all the pain - maybe his body is gone, and with it his capability to be human. Maybe the light will unspool this oily tangle of hopelessness, and there will be nothing underneath. The cocoon will close on itself and then fade, and where his pain was there’ll be only kitchen floor and a slight chill in the air. Maybe this is the healing he gets before he sleeps forever, balancing out to neutral, dissipating the last violent energy.

He’s okay with that. He’d be okay with staying in this moment forever - this is what he always dreamed heaven felt like - but it has to end eventually. He doesn’t want to eat away all of their energy. He doesn’t want to get anything else wrong. He just wants to rest.

The warmth retreats eventually, in small stages, thread by thread. But it doesn’t give way to the cold like he expects, and it doesn’t dissolve him. It sinks under his skin, melting into his bones, keeping him from falling back into the abyss even though the sharp memories still cling.

Newt says, “Oh,” with the same prayerful reverence Credence remembers from the faithful in church.

He opens his eyes.

“There he is,” says Queenie.

He has eyes to open. He lets out a breath, pulls in air. Presses his palm flat against the kitchen floor, memorizing the sandy grain of the wood. He has a body. Stares at his hands like he can’t quite fathom their reality, moans softly to give himself a voice. He’s… not cold, exactly, but he’s also not sure he feels like a real person, and he’s afraid of the pain coming back, and the fear of the pain makes it worse.

“Credence,” Newt says, like he did in the train station, the last time Credence had a body of his own, “may I hold you?”

He flinches slightly. Not from Newt, or from the newness of it all, but from the fear. The fear is so raw. If he touches Newt, he might rip all of the life from him, he might tunnel back into that dark place, and he doesn’t want -

“It’s all right,” Newt adds. “You can say no. I know this is overwhelming. Whatever you need, we’ll get it for you.”

Credence’s mouth trembles, and so does his hand when he stretches it out. He can’t force his fingertips to close the last few inches, haunted by the faces of the people he killed, haunted by the fear of the people in the station, haunted by the last image of Newt’s sickness, haunted by himself.

_maybe if i wasn’t bad none of this would have happened_

_it's all my fault_

_i don't deserve_

“He’s afraid he’s going to hurt you, Newt,” Queenie supplies. “Not the other way around.” Her lower lashes glisten with tears, and she smiles. “I don’t think you’re going to hurt him, honey. Besides, there’s two _very_ skilled witches here to keep the situation in hand.”

Credence swallows. His hand shakes. He still can’t do it. But he doesn’t have to, because Newt reaches up and clasps their fingers firmly together.

The pull of energy is there, but Credence pushes it down, controls it like he couldn’t before. He swallows, focuses on a different yearning. Newt’s facial expression hasn’t changed, and there haven’t been any bangs or flashes of light to indicate something gone horribly wrong. Credence tries not to flinch again. It’s all he can do not to pull his hand out of Newt’s grip, but he doesn’t know how to communicate this - _i don’t want this to end but i’m so scared it’ll go wrong please don’t let it go wrong please just once don’t let it go wrong_

After a moment, he realizes that Newt is looking for an answer from him. When he can’t find the words, Queenie says, “You’re doing good, honey. Both of you.”

Finally, Newt lets himself smile. “ _Now_ would it be all right if I held you?” he asks.

Credence nods once. It takes some orienting, remembering how to have a body, remembering how to slot the limbs in place. But he manages to fold himself up against Newt’s chest, and Tina rubs his back, and Queenie strokes his hair, and in this tiny kitchen floor in this tiny apartment, for this one moment, he’s loved.

He lays his head on Newt’s shoulder and cries.


End file.
